5087 réponses à ce sujet

[drayfish]

@ Ieldra2:
 
Yes, I was rather mystified by the way that Bioware set up the Control option in light of that final confrontation with the Illusive Man. With that 'So the Illusive man was right' line, the whole scenario was almost comical:
 
'Well sure, he's dead, Shepard. Sure, we wiped his mind and tossed him on a pile. Of course. But you –  Uh, you're different, see? Yeah. That's it. Different. With your brain and that. So we sure won't do that to you... Now go electrify yourself.'
 
(And just to be clear: what I'm mocking there is not the notion of the Control Ending itself, but the way it was presented in text.)
 
 

Hawk227 wrote...
@ Drayfish

I agree about Cerberus. I think the way they are handled is one of the bigger failures in the narrative. For a lot of Shepards, following TIM made sense. They kept the Collector base because it made sense, because maybe Cerberus could use it for 'good'. But off-screen somewhere between Arrival and the beginning of ME3 we told Cerberus to screw off. I'm not really opposed to having Cerberus devolve into cannon fodder, but I think the transition should have been more... organic.

If we saved the Collector base, instead of starting out in Vancouver with the Alliance, we start out at some Cerberus base talking to TIM through hologram. We do a couple short missions, culminating in the reveal that TIM is indoctrinated or doing something even renegade Shepard can't condone (maybe an early reveal of Sanctuary) where the decision to split feels natural to the character. At which time we head to Vancouver and apologize to Anderson and the game proceeds normally with a war crimes trial being interrupted with a Reaper invasion. If we could really tear up the script and start all over, we could extend it out over multiple acts. Unite the Galaxy as either Cerberus or Alliance, allowing two different but roughly parallel branches coming together in Act 2 or 3 with the delayed Reaper invasion.

This is all riffing off of ideas proposed by numerous others, but in addition to fixing the Cerberus arc, it would allow for more player freedom in the early parts of the game (do we recruit the Krogan or the Quarians first? If we're with Cerberus, do the Quarians just tell us to screw off?) and then when the Reapers arrive, it has a jarring effect that creates an urgency that didn't really seem present in the game as is. Also, you could incorporate Earth better as well. Someone (CGG?) said we could have Earth as a hub world for the early acts, and then as the Reapers invade later it (and other hubs) get cut off until all we have left is the Citadel (or a Crucible hub). Ugh the more I think about it, the more I agree with delta_vee about the problems imposed by leading with the invasion (not that I disagreed before).

@ Hawk227:
 
Aaaaaahhhhhhh.... I want this! To start with Cerberus if you decided to keep the Collector Base! Damn that's good! And to get more face time watching Martin Sheen go nutty?! Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! In fact, that would make the eventual reunion with Anderson even more loaded; Prodigal Son/Daughter returns and all that... Wow. Good stuff, Hawk227. That patch is already being installed in my perfect head canon version of the game.
 
 
@ KitaSaturnyne:
 
Don't go there, man. I heard from the girls in legal: Karen is craaaaaaaazy!


EDIT: Oh, this isn't worthy of top spot given the multitude of deep debate going on.  Sorry.  But let's Stravinsky it up a bit: The Rite of Spring.

Modifié par drayfish, 25 juin 2012 - 09:59 .

[delta_vee]

Going back a bit here - I hope you'll all forgive me my omnibus tendencies.

@frypan

Fines ex rebus, eh? That'll do nicely.

As for BSG's endpoint, well, at least they (generally, mostly) wrapped up the characters' fates. Not properly, mind you (*coughKaracough*), but enough to satisfy a number of fans who care less (if at all) for the mysteries of the series (and by corollary, how much sense they make (or don't)).

@osbornep

To clarify, what I assume you're objecting to is the ending-o-tron in particular, where the ending turns on one particular act moments before the game ends, rather than the idea of multiple endings in general (as long as those endings stem logically from one's prior choices).

Very much this, yes. In general I'm against last-minute salvations or divergences of any variety - narrative, thematic, characterizational, whatever - across all media.

There's an interesting essay by Orson Scott Card (I believe from Maps in a Mirror; also, before he slid into hateful senility) which talked about the thoroughly Calvinist perspective of Star Wars - specifically, the last-minute "redemption" of Vader. That sort of sudden reversal, without sufficient groundwork ahead of time, always rankles me on some level or another.

Multiple endings are fine, if they are earned. In my eyes, this usually requires the critical point to be much further back in the narrative. If I can cite Film Crit Hulk yet again, there's a good discussion of where in the story the critical point should lie.

That sounds basically right to me, yet I still have a nitpicky worry about applying this logic to video games: Why single out the ending? In other words, what's the principled difference between the ending and other moments/choices in the game such that the ending must be in some sense inevitable (given one's past choices), whereas other critical moments need not be? For instance, on Rannoch, depending upon your past choices, you may be unable to make peace between the Quarians and the Geth. Would you consider this consistent with the principles you've articulated here, and if not, why not? There's no devastating objection here; just trying to get clear on your thinking about this.

I only single out the ending because it's, well, rather trivial to explore the various outcomes, if nothing else. The fines ex rebus (awesome term, frypan) allows for mere selection of ending, instead of what I consider to be the more valuable approach of intertwining the ending with the preceding narrative. By focusing the choice mechanics on the preceding narrative, that sense of inevitability is built along the way, and thus accumulates more weight.

@Ieldra2

So, no I didn't enter ME3 with "Reaperduction" (LOL @ the term) as the Reapers' goal in my mind. Besides, that would have been incredibly cheap, to reduce a cosmic mystery to simple reproduction.

I think there's a certain poetry to such a reduction. Then again, I'm a rank materialist, and my version of a good cosmic mystery involves rather...involved...permutations of spacetime. The idea of the Reapers "merely" existing, using the cycle to make more of themselves and prevent the rise of true competitors instead of some grand, unfathomable, terrible purpose (Dune quote alert!) - well, it has a certain appeal to me. It reinforces both the Mundane nature of the universe and its fundamental indifference to even those who would be gods.

@drayfish

On Cerberus: from the moment of Shepard's forced alliance with them in ME2, it's increasingly clear to me that Bioware had no real consensus on how to position them in the larger narrative. That we spent so much time fighting them in ME3, I think, speaks to the difficulties of using the war story they saddled themselves with while maintaining a familiar structure to the game. Much of that could've been avoided had the Reaper invasion begun later in the game, and Cerberus could've zig-zagged between ally and adversary, instead of being the most simplistic and straightforward of cackling villains.

Also, I love Rite of Spring. Excellent choice.

@Kita

Third, I wanted to go back to answers bombarding us left and right. The Catalyst is standing between us and the end of a trilogy. As far as story goes, it needs to be providing answers, not talking to us in obtuse riddles in the name of inciting mystery at the very ass-end of a story. I've talked before about how people make fun of the way LotR: Return of the King wraps up its many storylines, but I've also argued that it exemplifies the way to end a trilogy: You wrap everything you can up in a nice pretty little bow, then wave goodbye as the door closes on that story. Instead, what the Catalyst does, according to how I see your argument, is give us something we can't understand when: a) it should be something we can understand completely as we move towards the end of the story, and; a convention like this should be occurring at the beginning of the story and not the end.

Agreed. That is all.

[edisnooM]

@drayfish

I forgot to mention in my previous post, but I agree about Cerberus. Though I never agreed with them and wish I could have called them out on things we found out about them in ME1 (especially Akuze), I could sort of see their point of view and why they might carry out the actions they did. But then in ME3 they're just kicking puppies.

[drayfish]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

My problem with the Catalyst isn't that he's so alien that he's ineffable, it's that he thinks like an especially stupid, stubborn, and fearful human. He's all of humanity's worst impulses and ideas boiled down into an infinitely-hateable glowing silhouette of stubborn smug paternalistic faux-pragmatic arrogance.

Assuming he does, in fact, control the Reapers, he's willing to get them all killed AND force you to commit genocide rather than admit defeat, take his ball, and go home.

There are a bunch of non-standard alien ways he could have reacted. If, when Shepard showed up, he had simply said "Well, this scenario has reached its logical conclusion. We'll be going now. Or you could push that red button to kill the Reapers and the geth. Whatever. It makes no difference to us. Cheers!" that would have frankly been awesome.

@CulturalGeekGirl:

I completely agree. Indeed, I've seen memes of the Catalyst in which he's depicted with Troll-face and thought it was extremely fitting, as to me that seems to be how he behaves. He throws an idea out there, refuses to actually debate or discuss it (or at least the game mechanics prevent us from seriously debating or discussing), hobbles us with speculation (ouch, that word) and torches the universe without ever admitting that his ideas might be worthy of dispute.
 
Where is the moderator for the Catalyst?! I want him banned!
 
I much prefer your proposed image of him. Much more in line with several Wizard of Oz inspired notions I would have somehow found more palatable.

[thisisme8]

@KitaSaturnyne
Ok, so when I read a book, watch a movie, or play a story-driven game, I keep these things in mind:

Take nothing at face value
Take everything at face value
Listen to everything being said and invest

With these rules applied to something like Star Wars, I find:
The enemy is Darth Vader - wait, the enemy is the Emperor - wait, the hero is Darth Vader. Granted, I had to grow up and watch it again (I was just a kid when it came out), but even before the prequels came out, I came to my own conclusion that the real hero of Star Wars was Darth Vader, and the real mission in Star Wars wasn't defeating the Emperor, but being free from the Empire.

Look at Mass Effect now:
The villain is the Geth - wait, the villain is Saren - wait, the villain is Sovereign - wait, the villain is the Reapers.
Now, according to everything being said to me throughout the three games, this villain is beyond my comprehension. Maybe because they are, in fact, superior. Maybe because they're alien. Maybe because they're decisions were made in an era that I have no ideas about. Even through their incomprehensible (flawed in my view) logic, even the villain sees his logic is now flawed and decides to come to an end - while in the face of victory, no less. He had us, we were done, but he still saw his own obsolete method didn't apply anymore. But much like Star Wars, the real goal was never to defeat the villain, but to be free of the oppression.

To be honest, I felt the end of LotR was too neat. Sure, we had a main guy or two bite the dust, but we beat the bad guy and the king was king, the love was felt, the hobbits were heroes, and the warm and fuzzies filled the land - and this continued on for pages. I hate these endings. A final act should take everything you've been told and confront it - make you question it - then give you an impossible decision to supersede it.
What were we told in Mass Effect? Synthesis is an option. The Reapers are unbeatable, and have been for millions of years. Our galaxy is filled with strife against organics and synthetics alike. Our universe is older than we though. The citadel is not what it seems. A villain exists that is in many ways superior to us.
What were we told in Mass Effect 2? A new villain is the remains of an older civilization. Our old villain is scarier than we though. Our defeat is unimaginably horrific. We're running out of time. The Reapers are stronger than we thought.
What were we told in Mass Effect 3? Nothing is what it seems. Everything is going to hell. The enemy's own power is made unimaginable by the existence of our own weapon that depends on this power to work. Survival by conventional means and/or war is impossible. The citadel is not what it seems.

I could go on, but I'm getting distracted. The point is, the ending to ME3, while shocking - perhaps jarring is a better word - was not unprecedented. It gave us what Sovereign told us way back in ME1 and threw it in our face: We're incomprehensible in strength and reason to you. But it didn't change the overall goal, it just raised the stakes for it. Freedom from oppression is still paramount, regardless of the face of our adversary. The impossible decision is then given: face defeat, compromise, or surrender. Organics are saved regardless, but Shepard's honor is the one being questioned. Take control (face defeat), synthesize (compromise), or surrender (destruction). Surrender is an interesting one, because it basically says: become an inverse agent of our own - destroy synthetics in a similar cycle every time they get too powerful.

Either way, and I may be the only one, but I saw the end coming and was not surprised by the path they took. Granted, the execution has flaws and holes, but the overall idea was not lost on me.

Remember that this is not me arguing to prove I'm right, just offering my view for discussion. It may or may not change on a whim, I simply thought this was a good thread since I don't see the end as thematically revolting, instead, revolting by design.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

This thing with Cerberus and TIM. The confrontation on Mars, or rather the meeting at the Mars Archives... I had given TIM the base to learn from the tech and figure out what made the reapers tick, find a weakness to exploit. I didn't depart on a self-righteous belligerent note that paragons are famous for. I'm a renegon.

When TIM mentioned he had found a way to control the reapers, I was curious. I wanted to ask "How? It is obvious something is controlling them. Given the length of time they've been around one could surmise it is some sort of AI. Have you found a way of reprogramming it? If that's the case why are we fighting?" Well maybe a military officer wouldn't ask a question like that, but Liara possibly? That would be my guess.

But no, they turned him into a two dimensional villain, the antagonist of the story. The reapers are the common enemy. TIM and Cerberus obstruct you every step of the way.

And while they gave Shepard some emotional expression this time, it wasn't YOUR emotional expression. It was Mac's vision of Shepard's emotions. Shepard became a brooding, self-loathing, character, who had nightmares not about the horrible things like:

* seeing her family killed by Batarian slavers
* getting half her squad killed on Torfan and getting a medal for it
* watching Kelly Chambers getting turned to mush while she screamed and pounded on the tube trying to escape while Shepard tried in vain to save her.
* watching Thane Krios getting taken away by a seeker swarm
* making a decision that cost the lives of hostages on an asteroid @ Terra Nova
* firing up the thrusters to drive an asteroid into a mass relay and commit genocide of 300,000 Batarians to delay a reaper invasion.

No. Instead she has nightmares about some kid she saw in a vent. And of course they used the vent kid as the Catalyst knowing full well that this would ****** off the player to no end. Did they think for a second that we'd be sympathetic? Were Mac and Casey that naive?

The whole premise of "the reapers are my solution." You represent chaos, we represent order. And according to about 99% of religions in the world Good = order; Chaos = evil. So we organics make synthetics that turn on us and create chaos so the reapers must come in and kill... er harvest us to bring order to the chaos (and have a little fun turning us into abominations like husks, cannibals, banshees, brutes, and assorted other twisted things of "order" too). And they preserve the rest of us in reaper form making room for the next cycle. It's kind of like farming to them, with a little fun on the side. Does anyone see anything really wrong with this picture? "Yo dawg...." indeed.

So our wonderful "artistic" writers give us three choices which I really don't need to go into. The only one that is worth a tinker's damn is the red one, and everyone would go straight for it, and our writers know this. They know Synthesis hasn't a prayer of standing on its own merit. They know Control hasn't a prayer of standing on its own merit. Not with Destroy available. So what do they do? They slap "you can destroy the reapers and the catalyst who controls the reapers, but if you do, you also commit genocide on the Geth who helped you, and you kill one of your squadmates." And in all three you destroy those evil mass relays because technology is evil! Well if you choose to become the catalyst we might only deactivate them in Control. So there you go. Enjoy! Oh, and you die in Control and Synthesis, and must live with the horrors you inflicted in Destroy. Isn't that nice?

EDIT: and the Catalyst predicting that the cycle will start again? bull****. Ever heard of Chaos Theory? The Catalyst cannot predict that far out. Organic civilizations may not advance that far where they create the much feared tech singularity. There is too much uncertainty. You really can't predict accurately past a couple weeks. Too many variables. The catalyst is full of it. I don't believe him. I think organics deserve a chance to try and make their way without interference and control from this computer.

So the solution to the problem: uninstall Arrival. Blow up the Heretic base in ME2. Side with Tali in the AI core even if you have the persuade options. Use Legion for your Tech expert (he takes one in the flashlight, thus ending that problem). With Arrival uninstalled you cannot commit genocide on the Batarians (the 105th Marines do that instead). In ME3 you get Geth VI instead of Legion and don't get the peace option, so you must choose either Quarians or Geth. Don't let Geth VI upload the reaper code, and the Quarians then are responsible for finishing off the Geth. And on the final assault to the beam, take EDI with you because she'll get killed in the blast.

That will make Destroy guilt-free. Metagaming for the win.

Modifié par sH0tgUn jUliA, 25 juin 2012 - 10:34 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

@drayfish

That explains the office full of fish skeletons. As for Rite of Spring, it reminded me of "I Wouldn't Normally do This Kind of Thing" by Pet Shop Boys, so I went with that. Sorry.

@delta_vee

I would argue that Star Wars foreshadows Vader's possible redemption through Luke's insights and interactions with him. "There's good in him, I've felt it!" "I know there is good in you". And then, at the end, wow. Luke was right. But that's another topic for a completely other message board.

delta_vee wrote...

I only single out the ending because it's, well, rather trivial to explore the various outcomes, if nothing else. The fines ex rebus (awesome term, frypan) allows for mere selection of ending, instead of what I consider to be the more valuable approach of intertwining the ending with the preceding narrative. By focusing the choice mechanics on the preceding narrative, that sense of inevitability is built along the way, and thus accumulates more weight.

I'm not sure how to articulate what I'm thinking about this, other than to say that putting choices here make the series feel like we've just watched a Youtube video and that grid of (somewhat) related videos comes up at the end.

Also, since you haven't in at least three posts: Dark Souls. (Drink!)

EDIT: On a last note, I'm wondering if it would have been much more logical for the Catalyst to be more of an oracle of warning. "Be careful when you build artificial life, as it could turn against you" kind of thing. It would certainly give it a much bigger air of mysticism, and it would be coming from a better place than sending very terrifying-looking ships at us to kill us all and melt us down into sludge.

@thisisme8

I see better where you're coming from. Thank you for that articulation.

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 25 juin 2012 - 11:03 .

[Code_R]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

And while they gave Shepard some emotional expression this time, it wasn't YOUR emotional expression. It was Mac's vision of Shepard's emotions. Shepard became a brooding, self-loathing, character, who had nightmares not about the horrible things like:

* seeing her family killed by Batarian slavers
* getting half her squad killed on Torfan and getting a medal for it
* watching Kelly Chambers getting turned to mush while she screamed and pounded on the tube trying to escape while Shepard tried in vain to save her.
* watching Thane Krios getting taken away by a seeker swarm
* making a decision that cost the lives of hostages on an asteroid @ Terra Nova
* firing up the thrusters to drive an asteroid into a mass relay and commit genocide of 300,000 Batarians to delay a reaper invasion.

This makes far too much sense

Modifié par Code_R, 25 juin 2012 - 10:55 .

[frypan]

My goodness,

Did the thread ghouls come out last night after I went to bed?. Things were quiet and I thought they'd stay that way until the EC. But now - Cerberus and the Alien Intelligence topic running (among others)?

So much for the last hurrah, now I have a whole bunch of reading to catch up on.

"back to work"

Modifié par frypan, 26 juin 2012 - 12:08 .

[frypan]

EDIT ......"back from work"

@Kita

Just caught your post on the alien intelligence. Well said. You make some good points made about the methodology adopted by the reapers. Like tardy bouncers, they keep turning up late to the party and the synthetics have already arrived. Geez, even the Protheans had already had a punch up with synthetics first.

I should mention that, like you, I don’t think the devs necessarily had the alien intelligence idea in mind. For me its sits somewhere in the realms of IT as brilliant head canon to explain development mistakes. However unlike IT, it evokes idea that sit more comfortably with me than the idea Shepherd loses his mind at the end.

I also like the sense of the unknown it leaves the game on, which somewhat mitigates the general awfulness of the ending choices. Think about this, maybe the catalyst is insane by our standards – a possibility thisisme8 raised. No need for logic as we understand it, as like a paranoid, the entity has constructed its own logic and reality to explain the universe.

The ending is simply unsatisfying on many levels, but it may still be understandable if we apply such a mode of thinking to the catalyst. The fact is that the final moments strike me as simply a clumsy wrap up by the devs, but it might, just might be possible to use the concept as a workaround. I like the concept and think it could have worked if done better.

Maybe I’m reaching, but I think it is good of thisisme8 to come onto the thread and argue something unpopular. Any new ideas that help us work towards a resolution are good ones. I’m adopting a scattergun approach now – all these little pellets of wisdom may allow us to blast out a satisfactory explanation if the devs still come up short.

Delta_Vee, Hawk227 and yourself have pointed out the flaws, especially, especially in regards to the method of communication. It still comes into harsh conflict with the themes of the game so far, and the resolution of the trilogy.

Delta’s comments about the required intertwining of narrative with ending on an ongoing basis means that even if we accept the alien intelligence issue, as a structural level it still is problematic. Nevertheless the concept is evocative of some core aspects of the game in regards to the character of the reapers, something that should not be dismissed.

Just a couple of final clarifications. Who ever said the world was flat? The Romans didn’t think so, and consistently used the word orbis to describe the planet. I think cracked.com put this one to bed a while ago.

Another point. In ME1, Saren said that the Geth would survive this cycle, suggesting the whole synthetics vs organics argument was hogwash, as even the reapers didn’t intend to kill them off. I’m sure this argument has been addressed before, but it seems another manifestation of the theme only being introduced at the end.

@Delta_vee. Think I’ll go look up Blindsight now.

@Hawk227 and Drayfish. Love the Cerberus ideas. Hawk’s starting scenario is particularly good, but the two concepts certainly bring the whole Cerberus cycle to a satisfactory head in the third game.

@Shotgun Julia – well said. The reapers really are malevolent in their methods. This is more of an argument that their whole way of thinking is bonkers. They simply went batty and evil in dark space.

I can see the conversations:

Sovereign “is it time yet…?”
Harbinger “Nope”
Sovereign “How about now?”
Harbinger “Not yet. Why don’t you do think about some new husk forms for a bit?”
Sovereign  “Hells yes. This time they’re really gonna pay…”

Modifié par frypan, 26 juin 2012 - 02:04 .

[thisisme8]

frypan wrote...

My goodness,

Did the thread ghouls come out last night after I went to bed?. Things were quiet and I thought they'd stay that way until the EC. But now - Cerberus and the Alien Intelligence topic running (among others)?

So much for the last hurrah, now I have a whole bunch of reading to catch up on.

"back to work"

There's no time for sleep!  Finish reading and get your playthrough ready, tomorrow's a big day.  Weren't you coming down with a cold?

[thisisme8]

@shotgunjulia

Can't predict further than 2 weeks? Don't ever, ever, ever pick up Dune and read it. Those books are so full of predicting the future into hundreds and thousands of years (especially once you get into Children of Dune and so forth). Throw Herbert's chapter-long explanations of how and why and you'll go mad. Frypan and I like them, but probably just because we've accepted that the spice is the worm.

[frypan]

Actually, I do have a cold, and still had to come to work. (Its a cold winter here) Due to the vagaries of timezones I have no idea when the EC is out, and when we'll see the verdict as well.

Plus, I have to do Resanthe's fix, (bless him) which involves flash drives and the like to get the game to work on xbox, so I'd rather see what others think first.

Actually, now I think of it, what are you doing here? Not out yet in your region, or has everyone else's heads imploded, and we'll hear nothing from them again?

Its awfully silent...

[delta_vee]

Chaos theory (more properly "dynamical systems theory") is a funny and complex thing. Mandlebrot's work, for example, was pivotal in establishing methods for determining the limits of retained information in a given system (using the Hausdorff dimension of the system among other factors, so lots of fractal math). Then you have strange attractors and fold catastrophes; the former are points which the system tends towards (even if they're never reached), the latter are points on the system's topology where small changes in input produce large divergences in output.

This is sort of where I thought they were going during that conversation with Vendetta about the patterns in previous cycles - and I thought the idea of the Reapers being as bound to the larger system as we were to be rather compelling. Instead, we get the traditional mastermind (literally and figuratively), which, no matter how alien and unknowable, is inherently a disappointment.

[thisisme8]

delta_vee wrote...
Instead, we get the traditional mastermind (literally and figuratively), which, no matter how alien and unknowable, is inherently a disappointment.

That poor catalyst.  Get's so much hate...  He's gonna have a complex when he grows up.

@frypan
It comes out tomorrow.  It's Monday, 10PM Eastern Standard Time right now.

[Hawk227]

frypan wrote...

The ending is simply unsatisfying on many levels, but it may still be understandable if we apply such a mode of thinking to the catalyst. The fact is that the final moments strike me as simply a clumsy wrap up by the devs, but it might, just might be possible to use the concept as a workaround. I like the concept and think it could have worked if done better.

I'm not entirely opposed to the Catalyst is insane idea, but the choices are still posed in a way that legitimizes his viewpoint. The game may or may not be telling us he's crazy, but it is saying that with our dying act we have to address his imagined problem, rather than our own very real one.

@Hawk227 and Drayfish. Love the Cerberus ideas. Hawk’s starting scenario is particularly good, but the two concepts certainly bring the whole Cerberus cycle to a satisfactory head in the third game.

Thanks! But mostly I was making only minor tweaks to ideas put forward by CGG, Seijin8, and I'm sure quite a few others.

Thisisme8 wrote...

Can't predict further than 2 weeks? Don't ever, ever, ever pick up Dune and read it. Those books are so full of predicting the future into hundreds and thousands of years (especially once you get into Children of Dune and so forth). Throw Herbert's chapter-long explanations of howand why and you'll go mad. Frypan and I like them, but probably just because we've accepted that the spice is the worm.

Is this why I don't like God Emporer of Dune or anything after it?

Modifié par Hawk227, 26 juin 2012 - 02:16 .

[darthoptimus003]

thisisme8 wrote...

@shotgunjulia

Can't predict further than 2 weeks? Don't ever, ever, ever pick up Dune and read it. Those books are so full of predicting the future into hundreds and thousands of years (especially once you get into Children of Dune and so forth). Throw Herbert's chapter-long explanations of how and why and you'll go mad. Frypan and I like them, but probably just because we've accepted that the spice is the worm.

like the worm need the worm
oh sorry dune moment
anyways you said the reapers are unbeatable
well apprently not we did it on several occasions
we might have lost a ton of ships but we could have taken them because muadeeb said so lol

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Hawk227 wrote...
I'm not entirely opposed to the Catalyst is insane idea, but the choices are still posed in a way that legitimizes his viewpoint. The game may or may not be telling us he's crazy, but it is saying that with our dying act we have to address his imagined problem, rather than our own very real one.

(Bold mine)

Holy crap.

This has summed up my opposition to the ending more succinctly than anything I've read, in this thread or any other.

It also points out why a simple EC can't fix things... the way to fix the game while retaining the current endings is to convince us that the Catalyst's problem is real before we ever meet him. That would be completely impossible to do without changing the vast majority of the game, including one of the two most beloved missions: Rannoch. Without that basis... without hours and hours of gameplay and conversation dedicated to convincing us that his problem is a real one, his solutions can never feel relevant.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 26 juin 2012 - 02:26 .

[edisnooM]

@frypan

It comes out on the 26th in North America, I believe you Aussies will have to wait til the 27th in your area.

Edit: This is what I get for not refreshing before posting, thisisme8 beat me to the time explanation. :-)

and

@Hawk227

I agree with CulturalGeekGirl, that is a very good summation of a major problem with the ending.

Modifié par edisnooM, 26 juin 2012 - 02:32 .

[thisisme8]

@Hawk227
I think those books on took a different tone because Herbert ran out of things to say about the current (at the time) issues he had with oil and the mid-east. He was an ecologist first and foremost, and once he had covered all of that, he was given free reign to write pure sci-fi.

About the reaper's problem vs. our own: Sovereign made it clear that our problems are irrelevant by the cycle's very existence. Even further to imply that arguing the probability of the original problem being made moot by the cycle. Whether or not that is flawed logic depends on the situation and occurrences that caused the cycle to be implemented to begin with. But claiming that the decision is logical is as unjust as claiming it is logical because we don't know about anything that happened. The endings we get to choose (whether you like them or not) are solving both our problems - how they were executed, or how the entire end was executed... meh.

@darthoptimus
If we had the weirding way, maybe. But without it, we took out a total of one, maybe two sovereign class reaper ships in the entire trilogy? A hades cannon and a couple destroyers. That took almost everything we had and they had thousands more where that came from... so...

[KitaSaturnyne]

@frypan

It is indeed compelling stuff, but something about how it's more incomprehensible through omission rather than actually being above our heads, as it were, that prevents me from connecting with it.

@Hawk227

Third on the explanation. It also is greatly indicative of the thematic disconnect of the game by this point.

@thisisme8

I agree that the Reapers think that our "problems" are far beneath them. However, what I think people like Hawk and myself are talking about is the problem presented by the story: "Us vs. the Reapers". When we meet the Catalyst, we're forced to solve a completely different conflict, "Organics vs. Synthetics/ Technological Singularity". We don't even have the option to go back and solve the conflict that's been driving the entire story of the ME games up to this point.

"Well, you got all this way trying to solve whatever your problem is, but now that you're here, you can solve MY problem, so let's get started."

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 26 juin 2012 - 02:49 .

[jbauck]

drayfish wrote...
@ Ieldra2:
Yes, I was rather mystified by the way that Bioware set up the Control option in light of that final confrontation with the Illusive Man. With that 'So the Illusive man was right' line, the whole scenario was almost comical:
 
'Well sure, he's dead, Shepard. Sure, we wiped his mind and tossed him on a pile. Of course. But you –  Uh, you're different, see? Yeah. That's it. Different. With your brain and that. So we sure won't do that to you... Now go electrify yourself.'
<snip>

So much reading ... other than this, I'm not going to snip quotes, or else I'll be writing this post all night catching up and making comments ...

Really, Synthesis is the option that strikes me as the most horrific and, well, thematically revolting, but I just can't bring myself to pick 'Control' either.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought of Morinth and "oh, sure - usually melding with Ardat-Yakshi kills the partner, but you would totally survive it!  Because you're so special ..."   For me, Control is the one that suffered through presentation the most.  Perhaps it could have been described in such a way that didn't make me think "No way!  I've seen that youtube video!  I know that leads to Critical Mission Failure!"

I'm rehashing a little on these, but my two cents:

Re: Cerberus
I'll just briefly say that Cerberus and Indoctrination were the two big things that I thought were handled flat-out bad in ME3.  The Illusive Man makes a fantastic Gray Area sort-of villain, whose ends-justify-the-means belief structure so nicely dovetails with a Renegade Shep.  TIM and Cerberus raise so many interesting questions that are then completely ignored.  At what point do the ends stop justifying the means?  At what point have we gone so far, lost so much of the good things that make us human, that we're not worth saving anymore anyway?  Making them Indoctrinated Tools ™ takes all of the "interesting" right out of them.

But, really, the writers have been weirdly ... weird about Cerberus since the beginning, making drastic swings between incompetent blundering and galaxy-threatening power.  Seriously, writers - pick one: they're a bungling organization that needs Shepard to save them from themselves and can't finish a scientific project without catastrophic casualties and total failure, or they're a real threat with a huge army, assaulting super-secret STG bases and duplicating the Indoctrination process.

I thought Indoctrination would not just be key in ME3, I thought it would be absolutely critical that Shepard find a way to detect, prevent, and remove indoctrination.  It really is the Reaper's most terrifying weapon (and, given indoctrination, it's totally ridiculous they didn't stop the united races of the galaxy from building the Crucible in the first place, but that's nitpicking).  I not only thought it would be critical, I thought the Geth would be instrumental.

Legion says that the Heretics chose to join the Reapers.  Most of them didn't.  Also, when the Geth joined up with the Reapers in ME3, Legion says it was because the Quarians blew up a bunch of Geth programs, made them all dumber, and pretty much killed their higher thought processes, so they were left with a self-preservation instinct, so when the Reapers said they could save them from the Quarians, they agreed.  So, every time the Geth joined up with the Quarians, it's because they Reapers asked.  Reaper Indoctrination affects organic minds, and the Geth aren't organic ... which means they can't be Indoctrinated, so could actually study Indoctrination safely.

Really, I thought we were going to find out that all of this synthetic/organic tension was caused by the Reapers in the first place.  AI research is outlawed because AI's go insane and try to kill all organics.  But if all of our technology is based on what the Reapers left us, couldn't an explanation for this be that the Reapers left a faulty basis for AI tech so that it would go insane and try to kill us?  If AIs can't be indoctrinated, so synthetic beings are our best line of defense against the Reapers, if they're not trying to kill us first (and, hey - thanks, Quarians!  Those synthetics you created who kicked you off your homeworld?  Because of how you created them, how they evolved into sentient beings instead of being flat-out created for sentience, you totally bypassed the Reaper Traps and pretty much saved us all!  Way to take one for the team!)

Ah, synthetics and organics, working together in their current form to stop the Reapers: that's a synthesis I can get behind.

But, really, I thought we were going to find out that the Reapers were even more awesome and terrifying than we'd thought up until now ... only ... not so much ...

Re: Catalyst Is An Alien Intelligence
The idea that the Catalyst's crazy machine logic was made incomprehensible on purpose to illustrate that it is, in fact, beyond our comprehension is ... interesting.  But I need to come back to it.  Right now, all I can think is ... "why didn't they just really go for it, then, and have the catalyst say 'the Reapers harvest organic life because ... Chewbacca is a wookie.  Duh.'"

I have really enjoyed reading the discussion, though - just ... the Chewbacca Defense ... that's all I've got.  Only thing I can add.

Re: Random Stuff
I'd never picked up Deus Ex, and it was on sale this weekend, so I did.  I am playing it now.  I'm curious if the ending of ME3 is less infuriating when it actually fits into the themes of the game it's in

[edisnooM]

@jbauck

Ooh, I like that idea of the Reapers behind the Synthetic vs Organic conflict. That could have been a very cool twist.

And Cerberus was apparently a Walters pet project or something along those lines (he wanted them more in ME1 but they couldn't fit them in, so when he was lead on ME2 he brought them back). Whether that explains anything or not I don't know.

Also yeah, Deus Ex is good, it really helps when the endings match the game. :-)

[delta_vee]

@thisisme8

Sovereign made it clear that our problems are irrelevant by the cycle's very existence.

Except that our problem is the cycle's very existence. And of the "solutions" we're presented (and I admit this is as much about mechanics as narrative), the only one available at all EMS levels is Destroy - which a) is not a solution at all for the Catalyst's problem, and also isn't a solution to our problem (the line is "...you can destroy all synthetics if you want...", which again doesn't align with our desire to defeat the Reapers specifically).

The entire scenario just seems to be caught in some netherworld between relevance to us and revelation of larger concerns. They needed to pick one or the other. If the former, don't shovel extra consequences for completing the game as we were asked. If the latter, spend some actual time, as CGG says, making the conflict real to us. They did neither, and the divergence left (many of) us rather dissociated.

@jbauck

Bravo. The idea of indoctrination as key to the war, and the geth's potential role in defanging it, is great.

Edit: on Deus Ex (and its modern incarnation DXHR), I'll agree with edisnooM. I'm not the biggest fan of the Ending-O-Tron device, but at least in DX it seems like a proper chance to answer the question the game's been asking the whole way through.

Modifié par delta_vee, 26 juin 2012 - 03:00 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

thisisme8 wrote...

@Hawk227
I think those books on took a different tone because Herbert ran out of things to say about the current (at the time) issues he had with oil and the mid-east. He was an ecologist first and foremost, and once he had covered all of that, he was given free reign to write pure sci-fi.

About the reaper's problem vs. our own: Sovereign made it clear that our problems are irrelevant by the cycle's very existence. Even further to imply that arguing the probability of the original problem being made moot by the cycle. Whether or not that is flawed logic depends on the situation and occurrences that caused the cycle to be implemented to begin with. But claiming that the decision is logical is as unjust as claiming it is logical because we don't know about anything that happened. The endings we get to choose (whether you like them or not) are solving both our problems - how they were executed, or how the entire end was executed... meh.

You can make this argument for any villain in any work, though: any time a villain declares puny {mortals} are insignificant, you're arguing that the story can then be satisfactorily resolved by making the villain's needs the top priority... which is, frankly, super lame.

I can give examples throughout literature: the Avengers could end with them giving Loki a bunch of power so he feels better about himself, Game of Thrones could end by just giving the Lannisters everything they want, that one series I like could be ended by letting the Angels just have their apocalypse and kill all humans - who needs free will, anyway?

No, a villain claiming our problems are irrelevant doesn't mean that appeasing him is the right way to go, narratively. That only works if you can actually bring about an epiphany in the player at the time of confrontation, one of those "Holy crap, I can't believe I agree with him" moments.

If the player doesn't agree that the problem the villain is attempting to solve is a real problem, then "solving" it will always feel dirty, even if it's being solved in a relatively benign way.

I may come back and post again with some more detailed examples, but I wanted to leave this post relatively spoiler-free.